Dance Together
by HVK
Summary: Deep within the lands the Umbaru call home, a witch doctor who comes to be called Marceline makes her Gargantuan zombie, an ally against the Burning Hells. Once, there was a boy she loved, and that boy dances with the spirits. Now, as she makes the mighty zombie with his totem skull, he comes back to fight alongside her against Evil. Finnceline vibes, ahoy!


I don't own Adventure Time or Diablo 3.

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_Deep within the jungles where live the Umbaru people, those who know the Unformed Land, there was a woman, who had been a girl alone and sad, and now she danced with the spirits, those she loved at the edge of her ear whispering guidance and encouragement. She spoke to the spirits, she knew the power of the swamp and jungle, and she was the greatest of their priest-mages; she was the Witch Doctor destined to one day strike down the Lord of Terror and all the Prime Evils with him._

_Her name was not Marceline, but the people of other lands, that was what they called her. It was close enough to her real name, so she accepted it._

_See her now, see her well; a dark-skinned woman, her frame tall and curved with experience in survival and the knowing of that to others, adorned in trophies and trinkets and tiny shrines to the spirits, a great carved mask over her face. A beautiful woman of the Tengze, and she dances to music only she can hear; it comes from the knives she uses in ceremonies, from the swamp water and the joins of banyan roots, from the eternal sky and the sounds of the jungle beasts; it is a rhythm to the world, striking her down to her soul and out her mouth comes a song without lyrics and only a tune. She does not understand what she says; only that it is from the spirtis, and it is good._

_And loudest of the spirits, she hears _him. _And it is gladdening. _

Marceline (so she would be called, and so she would accept) finished the dance in a long sweeping movement. Her toes marked out a circle around herself, a little temple to the spirits in the dirt and the muck. It was a tiny place made holy, and such pleased them immensely, and she stopped.

Beneath her, there was a great and vast shape. Some of preserved and mighty flesh, taken from the strongest beasts and embalmed and patiently made into something that could not rot or decay. Some of it was vegetation, bound up like muscles and skin and bone, alive with the power of the growing green things. Some of it was simply magic, and all came from Mother Swamp; the very essence of her homeland.

It was enormous, perhaps nearly twelve feet tall and six feet wide; human in shape, monstrous in appearance, and not unkind for all of that. It was rounded for its bulk, and seemed almost puppy-ish. But it did not have a head.

_Long ago, the witch doctor was only a girl, half-mad with grief. There had been a boy-_

_Dancing, skipping, playing, yes, her and the boy, perhaps once he had been one of the barbarian people that had come from Mount Arreat, pale skin and blonde hair so very odd to the dark skin and kinked hair of her own, and she feared that one day he might go with his own people and be gone forever, but they danced there and forever._

_Forever did not last so long, and the sick times came as the demons passed, and so many went to the Unformed Lands with a hard death, and he fought hardest of all when he got sick; there was a iron-hard stubbornness in him, too tough to give up, but he was only a boy, and he could not fight so long. Some said his people were already sick when their homelands died, and maybe that was why he was always a little sad on the inside._

_She'd called him 'Fin-Boy', because he once killed a shark with his bare hands. When he had wanted to declare himself a man in the eyes of her people, he had killed a bear with his hands. Its skull, given in honor and humility, rested on his chest rising up a little bit and then falling so slightly as he took his last breath._

_She went mad, a little. She did not eat. She did not sleep. She dreamed when she was awake, and she saw empty darkness when she closed her eyes. She grieved, hot and hard and madly, and threw herself into the deepest waters of the swamp and praying in tears that Mother Swamp would take her, and that there would be an end to the aching._

_Her eyes opened in the dark waters. Light beyond light in her mind and her heart, and she say beyond this pale world, this limited world, this false world. She saw the true realm._

Mbwiru Eikura. _The Unformed Land. The land of those who were not dead, but were truly alive at last. The home of all those who thought and felt and loved and lost._

_The spirits spoke to her for the first time then, and the first voice she heard was her Fin-Boy, demanding that she swim just as he did when they played at contests, and when she took that breath, the grief was gone, and nothing would ever hurt again._

Now, Marceline the witch doctor stood before her zombie-in-making, the great hulk that would be her weapon against the Ruinous Foes, the monsters from the Burning Hells. It didn't have a head, not yet.

Reverently, she raised a skull from beneath her skirts where it had hung by a string. A huge bear skull, teeth thicker than knives and the empty eye sockets somehow knowing. It was thicker around then her leg, longer than her arm, and it had been Fin-Boy's own totem.

She placed it upon the zombie's stumpy neck. Patiently, she wound it there, binding it there, until sinew and vine met bone and it was all one.

She stepped away, and it trembled as the spirits gave it life; a spirit entered it, and with a low growl, the eye sockets glowed with rich light.

Like a titan it was, and stood tall. Slowly, her gargantuan zombie towered over her, even sitting on one knee before her. It looked around, as if not seeing the world for a long time.

She held out her hand. The gargantuan peered down at her, and there was something so _pleased _in her gaze.

"Fin-Boy," she said, holding her hand out. "Let's go kill some monsters, yeah?"

The gargantuan zombie gently held her hand between two massive fingers each thicker around than her whole body._ Time for adventure, _it seemed to say.


End file.
